CCAC Surprises End of 2015

December 18, 2015 Comments Off on CCAC Surprises End of 2015

CCAC was invited this month to talk with three important and very different agencies about our mission, and to share ideas about “inclusion of quality captioning.” This is not a total surprise of course, since we advocate regularly and vigorously for the CCAC mission, yet it’s a good step forward for captioning advocacy to be consulted face-to-face.

Since we celebrate six years of CCAC activity this time of year also (December 19th is the CCAC anniversary date), it is good to know our voices are noticed. Even if inclusion of quality captioning does not move forward at the speeds millions of us would like, it is moving forward. Our advocacy, education, and raising awareness efforts make sense.

CCAC is a grass-roots citizen advocacy movement and we share common concerns for access and inclusion with many others. CCAC’s advocacy mission, “inclusion of quality captioning universally” defines us. CCAC is not however located in the Washington D.C. area (like many long established groups), we are all volunteers, and relatively-speaking, the CCAC is the “new kid” on the captioning advocacy block (of course we’ve been active on this issue and related things for many more years). We “meet” online mainly, every day in many ways, for “group” work important to the CCAC culture – sharing ideas, information, discussion and action online – step by step.

The Surprises:

This month the President of the CCAC spoke directly with Google.com about YouTube Captioning. We are very pleased to be able to learn from them, and to “tell them our issues!” We want quality CC on all videos ASAP, and we hope our advocacy and some technical advice offered will be useful there. They said it will, and we hope the conversation continues. Fan or crowd captioning is their newest feature for YT videos, and CCAC members contributed good questions and feedback about what seem to be remaining bugs and inefficiency in this newest feature. At the same time, as always, we emphasized how important quality CC as a first thought is, not as an afterthought – and our dedication to “equal communication access” online for all media.

Next week we will speak (live) to a person in the Department of Transportation (USA) about Air Travel Access. CCAC has been advocating since 2010 for this important concern. Read more on the CCAC webpage for this project-advocacy takes loads of time! http://ccacaptioning.org/captioning-transportation/

Finally, at least for now, an active CCAC member in Geneva (Switzerland) will meet in person in the new year to discuss a recent WHO survey about assistive devices. Our interest is advocating for the best inclusion of media captioning, and live event captioning also, in any WHO matters and interests as they strive to promote access and inclusion of PWD world-wide. It’s a healthy thing to do.

Raise your voices anyplace you can for communication access. We hope you join and use the CCAC too – to build stronger collaborations. Join the CCAC, find us on social media, and tell others about this blog please.